Of course. Thinking in terms of "building a movement" is a powerful mental model that shifts the focus from isolated tasks to creating lasting, systemic change. It's helpful because it transforms the nature of the work itself, making it more resilient, impactful, and meaningful.
Here’s a breakdown of why this mindset is so beneficial:
A movement is inherently collective. This mindset immediately counters isolation and burnout.
Individual Effort: "I have to solve this problem." This leads to pressure, limited perspective, and eventual exhaustion.
Movement Building: "How can we solve this problem together?" This distributes the workload, multiplies creativity, and creates a shared sense of responsibility and support.
Movements are marathons, not sprints. They are designed to outlive their founders.
Project Mindset: A project has a clear end date. When it's over, momentum can die.
Movement Mindset: The goal is to embed change into the culture, laws, and hearts of people. It focuses on building infrastructure, leadership pipelines, and a lasting legacy.
The core activity of a movement is not doing the work for people, but empowering them to do it themselves.
Top-Down Model: A single leader or a small group directs all action. This creates a bottleneck and a single point of failure.
Movement Model: The goal is to inspire, equip, and delegate. You're not just building a campaign; you're building an army of advocates and leaders who can carry the vision forward without you.
A movement is held together by a common "Why." This is far more powerful and flexible than a rigid plan.
Task-Centric View: "We need to complete these specific actions." If the plan fails, morale plummets.
Purpose-Centric View: "We are united by our belief in justice, equality, or innovation." This shared "North Star" allows the community to adapt strategies, pivot when necessary, and stay united even when tactics differ.
Movements understand the psychology of momentum. Small wins are celebrated and used to fuel larger ones.
Static Goal: A goal is a fixed point. Once reached, the effort can dissipate.
Dynamic Momentum: Each achievement—a new volunteer, a successful event, a policy change—is framed as a step that energizes the community and attracts more people, creating a snowball effect.
Because a movement is a decentralized network, it can withstand setbacks that would destroy a centralized organization.
Fragile System: If the leader leaves or the funding dries up, the whole operation collapses.
Anti-Fragile Movement: If one part of the movement is challenged, other nodes in the network can rise up, adapt, and continue the fight. The diversity of thought and approach within a movement makes it incredibly resilient.
This framework is not just for social justice. It's useful in many contexts:
Social & Environmental Change: Civil rights, climate action, community organizing.
Corporate Innovation: Shifting a company's culture, launching a new disruptive product that changes consumer behavior (e.g., Tesla's movement towards electric vehicles).
Startups & Entrepreneurship: Building a passionate user base that believes in your mission, not just your product (e.g., Apple in its early days).
Personal Growth: Building a movement for change within your own life, rallying friends, family, and habits around a new goal.
Thinking in terms of a movement isn't the best approach for every situation.
For well-defined, technical problems (e.g., "fix this specific software bug"), a straightforward project management approach is more efficient.
Movements can be messy and slow to build consensus. When urgent, decisive action is required, a hierarchical structure can be more effective.
In conclusion, thinking in terms of building a movement is helpful because it is a strategy for creating profound and lasting change. It replaces the exhausting paradigm of the lone hero with the empowering, resilient, and scalable model of a connected community united by a shared purpose.